Adam Levin - The Instructions

“…on the stoop?” my Dad was saying.

“No,” said my mother. “I came through the back.”

I hated the hiccups. They made me feel hopeless. I hardly ever got them; when I did they’d last hours.

“‘Maccabees not unwelcome,’ it says. This guy doesn’t understand the effect of double-negatives — either that or he likes me,” my dad told my mom. “I don’t know what’s more spooky.”

I could heal the hiccups instantly, but not when they were mine. When a friend had the hiccups, I’d take out my wallet, then take all the money out of my wallet, then count the money slowly, out loud.

“Both ways are spooky,” my mother said. “I’ll call the police.”

I’d have eleven dollars, or maybe just three — it didn’t matter, but call it eleven.

“I called them already — after the tires. They’re sending a car. It’ll be here at nine. They’ll send it every night til the trial blows over.”

I’d slap the money, or I’d slap a table with the money, and I’d tell my friend: This right here is eleven dollars cash. If you can hiccup one more time, I will give you all of it.

The cure never failed. No one ever hiccuped after I’d say that. Even the people who I’d done it to already. None of them would ever perform the cure on me, though. I think they thought that since I’d invented it, it wouldn’t work, and then they’d have to give me the money.

“ Not unwelcome ,” my father said. “Why not skip the not and the un ? Why not just write—

“Boo!” my dad shouted.

I startled. I hiccupped.

He laughed with my mom and the fake studio audience.

Then I explained to him about the un , and only the fake studio audience laughed.

“You’re telling me,” he said, “that someone comes along, vandalizes our property, and your solution to this is to further vandalize our property? How is that something my son thinks to do? How is that bright?”

I hiccuped.

“I’m asking you, Gurion.”

I was planning to blind him, I said, from my window, but he only comes around while I’m at Aptakisic.

“Why not call the police?” said my father.

I said, Because—

And he cut me off — he hadn’t been asking. “Even if being stricken with blindness,” he said, “were an appropriate punishment for committing an act of vandalism — and it isn’t, by the way, it’s tyrannical —why let your life be controlled by your ill-wishers? Why lose the sleep that they want you to lose? I don’t understand you.”

The police eventually leave, I said, and the vandals—

I hiccupped, this time cutting myself off.

“What?” said my father. “The vandals what ?”

They always come back.

“It is true,” my mother said.

“Don’t encourage him, Tamar. He’s not joking, and neither should we joke. If you blind someone, Gurion, you think no one will ever bother us again? Because that would be a fantasy. They will always bother us. You will always be bothered by others. And if you act violently toward those who bother you today, then tomorrow, they will return the favor.”

I’m— hiccup —stronger than them, I said.

“You know what?” he said. “Let’s accept your baseless premise, for the sake of argument, and see where it takes us. So fine, you’re the strongest person in the world, no one can harm you, you can kick everyone’s ass, you’re safe… I’m not, though. Not me. Not safe. I can’t kick everyone’s ass. And your mom can’t either, believe it or not; not everyone’s. So imagine one day the father of someone you blinded, vengeance-hungry, gathers his friends together and, knowing you’re an immortal asskicker, he rationally — notice I’m not even bothering to quibble over whether someone acting on vengeful impulses can properly be called rational —this vengeful father, he rationally decides to come after me, or your mother — both of us, say, for an eye for an eye is not good enough for this fellow and his buddies, he wants a two-for-one — and you’re at school, busy fighting janitors and vegetables with padlocks when they come — what then? We’re both blind is what then, your mother and I. And that’s only if the man and his friends settle on the two-for-one exchange, and I don’t see why they should; if two-for-one is acceptable, if an-eye-for-an-eye goes out the window, why not an eye for a life, two lives even? Especially when the woman keeps getting up, cursing in Arabic, breaking noses — any vengeful shmo with half a brain would certainly worry how your mother might avenge her self later, no? And even if they didn’t have half a brain, the damage she brings to these attackers before they get to her eyes — this is damage for which they would seek even more vengeance. And so what? What happens? We’re dead is so what. You’ve effectively killed your parents is what happens. How’s that for a fantasy? You blind a vandal and get to be an orphan. Gurion ben-No One,” he said. “Is that what you want? No one around to stop you from burning down houses with your delinquent friends and going to jail? To sink like a fucking ball of lead, no one to obstruct you?”

I wouldn’t, I said and hiccupped. I said, I wouldn’t let anyone kill you.

My mother said, “We know. No one will kill us, Gurion. You won’t be an orphan. Your father has had a hard day.”

“Please keep feeding the fire!” said my father. “Please undo everything I say to him!”

“You are yelling, Judah.”

“And you, Tamar, are not paying attention! You spoke to Avel Salt earlier, did you not? Your son is delusional. This is our fault.”

“Our son is imaginitive. You, on the other hand, are as touchy as you always become whenever you have just made closing arguments, and this is making you delusional.”

My father chewed a lip, turned away from my mother. My mother changed her posture. Good, I thought. Pinch him. Pinch him on the neck. Pinch him or reach out and thumb-stab his thigh. Instead she lit a cigarette and studied the cherry.

My parents were fighting.

“So tell me,” said my father. “You converted someone today?”

Yes, I said.

“And how is that possible?”

I explained. Or I tried to. The more I talked, the worse the hiccups got. The worse the hiccups got, the more H I got. And I had to look at Seinfeld , which looked like disrespect — I could look at Seinfeld or I could look at my father, who my hiccups were annoying, who I didn’t want to look at, whose lips got twistier, whose nostrils got wider, whose eyes got squintier with each word I spoke.

“Wow,” he said, once I’d finished explaining. “Wow!” he said. “I had no idea! Sabbatai Zevi and Shimon bar-Kokhba, Yeshua of Nazareth himself — how violently their bones must be quaking with jealousy. Your power to deceive yourself, Gurion — it’s unmatched. And that’s to say nothing of your ability to articulate your self-deceptions. Truly amazing. You keep it up, sonnyboy, you might actually be the end of us. And by ‘us’ I mean the Jews, of whom your girlfriend is one. Of course she is. Of course she’s Jewish. Your girlfriend is Jewish because she has a couple birthmarks and you’ve got a gift for casuistry.”

And you’ll have the cops watch over your house because you’ve got a gift for bravery , I said.

He pulled me from the couch and held me in the air, under the arms so we were eye-to-eye. He was giving me The Look of The End.

“This is the gaze of someone you would do better to hide from,” he said, in a whisper so calm Bam Slokum would envy it. “Someone looks at you like this, no matter who it is, it always means the same thing. It is how I’ve been looking at you for the past ten minutes. Memorize this gaze, and the next time you encounter it, you’ll know to run in the opposite direction before you lose the use of your legs.”